The first samples in Italy that were later detected to have the virus were from 18 Dec 2019 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7428442/ https://www.n

The first samples in Italy that were later detected to have the virus were from 18 Dec 2019 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7428442/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7428442/ The first documented COVID hospitalization was 16 Dec 2019. The first sample was sent for sequencing on 24 or 25 Dec 2019. 27 Dec 2019 was the date of the first medical report. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande... It was between those days an 20 Jan 2020 when Zhong Nanshan went public with the information that it was communicable human-to-human that the government in Wuhan was dithering. Long after the virus was already in those samples in Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhong_Nanshan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhong_Nanshan